Robot vs. Human

Artificial intelligence is a prevalent theme in Hollywood science fiction films. Rei Orion reviews the films of the genre and asks why Hollywood likes to switch between humans and machines so much

Rai Orion | Galileo

Shocking news about the approaching takeover of the intelligent machine over the human race has been buzzing all over the "cinematic galaxy" for four decades.

The intelligent computer, "HAL", from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey murdered three crew members on the spaceship he was in charge of. "Skynet", the intelligent computerized system, was connected to the network in 1997, developed self-awareness, and is about to start a nuclear war between the United States and Russia in the very near future, if someone dares to unplug it.

If the word of James Cameron and the film series Terminator is not enough, it turns out that humans are already "grown" inside the matrix and their energy is "harvested" for the machines.

Artificial intelligence in Hollywood cinema

Artificial intelligence is a prevalent theme in the science fiction films of Hollywood cinema. The background to the plot is often the same dark, futuristic and dystopian world, which represents the fear of the "machine" taking over.

Films such as those mentioned aim to emphasize, through negation, the superiority of human intelligence over artificial intelligence, at least if the goal is the good of man.

They present in countless ways the destructive results of the development of a super-intelligence by the human race, precisely because it is smarter than it. What is the meaning of this unresolved tension that is brought up out of nowhere every few years, and calls to lead humanity against "Skynt", the evil software? The answer to this can be found in the texts themselves, but also in the historical circumstances that led to their creation.

The dark futuristic dystopias make utilitarian use of the concept of "artificial intelligence". The theoretical concept, borrowed from the worlds of mathematics and computing, does not fit with the rebelliousness typical of artificial intelligence in cinema. Her goals are puzzling, since these are human goals such as achieving dominance and survival.
These behaviors are characteristic of humans, as they provide them with evolutionary advantages. An intelligent machine, capable of learning and improving, will not necessarily be subject to the same constraints, even if designed according to a human model.

Artificial intelligence, in the mathematical sense, is an "optimizing entity", meaning an entity that maximizes a certain utility function. Rebelliousness is a human trait and it is not necessary that it will be "inherited" by artificial intelligence. The danger is the opposite: the brain will blindly and uncompromisingly row towards its goal, without being able to exercise a human judgment of harm versus benefit. At this point, her abilities will already surpass the abilities of human intelligence, and any attempt to eliminate her will be futile. The results can be so devastating that we find ourselves in a world where we don't want to or can't live.

Futuristic dystopia in cinema

Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) is the first significant cinematic dystopia. It is a big-budget film that was a huge international success in terms of its time. The film tells about the city of Metropolis, where two classes live. Freder, a member of the upper class, falls in love with the leader of the workers, Maria, and turns to his father to correct the disgraceful conditions in which the workers live. To calm him down, his father creates a robot in the shape of his son's lover, and from there the plot gets complicated. This film influenced, directly and indirectly, the design of the spectacular dimension and the thematic structure of all contemporary Hollywood dystopias. The futuristic dystopia, in its origin, tries to hold a critical discussion about the seeds of disaster that are already in the present.

The machine won a place of supremacy already in the metropolis, but it served a role within a class society. It was the tool that enslaved the people of the lower city, the workers, to the people of the upper city, the capitalists. The social allegory is clear, even too explicit. The sharp line that separates the two worlds, the upper and the lower, is saturated with religious symbolism, and some argue that Freder's descent into the lower city, his first awareness of the poor living conditions, and his meeting with Maria, who will change his life forever, is parallel to the story of eating from the tree of knowledge and the expulsion from Eden.

an optimizing entity
The computer HAL from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is an excellent example of an optimizing entity. The film is divided into three parts: the first part is on Earth even before the appearance of the human race, the second is on the way to the moon, and the third and main one tells about the expedition of one spaceship to the planet Jupiter. HAL's cognitive abilities far exceed those of the team members, so he is able to outsmart them and deceive them. However, his murderous actions do not stem from anger, rebellion or self-preservation, but from what he perceives as the necessary steps for the success of the mission.

The film 2001: A Space Odyssey marks a thematic turning point in the genre. It opens with a story about a group of primates who learn to make killing tools in order to claim territory for themselves from another group. The primate society is basically an abstraction of the class society of Metropolis, where the technology is in the hands of one group. In the futuristic part of the film, the creations were reversed: technology uses man for its own purposes.

Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence (2001), based on Kubrick's idea, again faces the same problem of the optimizing being, but this time its function is the idea of ​​being loved. The android David, developed with the ability to feel and express emotions, joins a family, where his goal is to win the love of his human "mother", which even causes him to try to drown her real son. David has excellent mimicry skills, and you can't help but feel empathy for him. Therefore, instead of returning him to the factory, where he will be destroyed, "his mother" releases him in the forest. He will continue to crave her love for thousands of years after her death and the extinction of the entire civilization.

Both films – 2001: A Space Odyssey and Artificial Intelligence – deal with the fateful problems and consequences that many scientists believe may arise with the activation of optimization functions in computers and Androids. Humans do not fully understand their own goals, and many of them contradict each other. If so, how can they properly define the goals of the supercomputer? Any optimization of a utility function may ultimately prove harmful to humanity.

Kubrick paved the way for all subsequent films, in which the machine takes over humanity and hangs on it through successful mimicry abilities. The movie Matrix tells about Neo, who one night discovers that someone has penetrated his computer, and knows what his future is going to be in the next few minutes. This is how he discovers that the world he lives in is a world controlled by the Matrix, whose purpose is to sustain humans and use the energy they provide.

This world was created after the machines with artificial intelligence rebelled against the humans who created them. This movie is basically a monstrous, extreme embodiment of HAL's cunning. In the Matrix, hell takes place in the present, in reality. The "descent into hell" and the attainment of life-changing knowledge is illustrated in the "red ball or blue ball" scene, and the awakening that follows it, inside the growth capsule. However, the film does not show humans responsible for an oppressive social hierarchy. The intelligent machines alone are the top class. The members of the lower class, the enslaved, are all human beings. "Hell on earth" is a product of the machines only, and paradise is not inhabited in the present, but through hallucination or memory.

The idea of ​​being loved. From the movie "Artificial Intelligence" (2001). Screenshot

Not all robots are bad
The historical origin of the texts lies in a critical discussion of class society and its use of technology as a tool of enslavement. In the post-Odyssey era, in Hollywood films such as Terminator, The Matrix and I, Robot, the class war is replaced by a war of humans against a common enemy in the form of robots with artificial intelligence.

But not all robots are bad, just as not all upper city residents are bad. On the contrary, the plots of the films often lead to a course of cooperation between the humans and the "good" robots against the "bad" artificial intelligence. The foundations for this plot move were already laid in Metropolis: Freder, a member of the gentry, kills Rotwang, the mad scientist terrorizing the lower city, and saves Maria, the leader of the working class. They marry and rule together in the united city.

The contemporary dystopias preserved the general structure but replaced the Marxist and cooperative parable with an individualistic and capitalist one. In place of the son of the rich who experiences moral horror and goes against his peers, stands the chosen one, the one whose destiny, with a combination of luck and innate talent, was destined to lead humanity to victory over the machines.

The religious symbolism woven into the narrative structure of Metropolis is preserved in contemporary genre films. The underworld, Hell, in Terminator (1984) written and directed by James Cameron, is the near future. The film tells about the world after a nuclear war, where the machines have taken over the world and are trying to eliminate the rest of the human race. One of the robots goes back in time to 1984, to the time before the war, and tries to change the expected apocalyptic future. The meeting between the main characters in the film parallels the experience of knowing and meeting from Freder's year of life.

Watch the trailer for Terminator:

Urban legend
These films make one wonder if the thematic change in them reflects a real criticism of the present, or if the Hollywood films have only changed the story "enough" to empty it of meaning. 2001: A Space Odyssey produces a credible re-presentation of the concept of artificial intelligence, dealing with philosophical questions about the relationship between man and technology.

A successful urban legend claims that HAL is a reference to IBM, since the company's name is made up of the letters that follow H, A, and L in the English alphabet. It may reflect real trends, doubts and fears, but these do not necessarily refer directly to artificial intelligence, but to the prophecy (which has since come true) that computers will integrate into all areas of our lives. From this was born the fear, which has since been illustrated in cinema through images of artificial intelligence, that we will depend on computers to the point that they will control us.

Contemporary Hollywood science fiction films draw from Metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey for the general thematic and symbolic structure; But the artificial intelligence represented in them does not fully reflect the theoretical concept, and the class war takes place in them in a sterilized version. Robots that exhibit human behavior, and whose goals are human, serve as a substitute for the characters of the other and the antagonist. The presentation of the "bad guy" as a robot allows him to be left in comfortable anonymity, far from any referent in reality.

Therefore, it is difficult to say that these films refer to something real or reasonable, or that they pass a certain criticism. They are first of all commercial products, and as such they strive to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Hence the obvious choice to build them based on previous commercial successes, to remove the critical sting from them on the one hand, and to enhance their degree of visual presentation on the other. Under these conditions it is possible to strum on the strings of collective fear, to produce a shaking emotional experience, devoid of harshness but also meaningless, and this by a simple will: to sell.

The full article was published in Galileo magazine, May 2012